Friday, September 16, 2016

The 2015 RyMickey Awards - Worst Film

I think I've grown nicer in my old age. Either that or I've just grown less likely to stick it out when it comes to really bad movies. While I can't vouch for the veracity of the former, the latter is most definitely true. Particularly in these final months of my 2015 movie watching, I was not keen on making myself sit through something that I knew was going to be truly awful. So, in that regard, the movies listed below were at a disadvantage as most of them I watched during the first half of my 2015 viewing year. Films partly watched during the second half -- including the critically dismissed Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse, Walt Before Mickey (which was truly heinous for the fifteen minutes I watched), Rock the Kasbah and the critically praised White God and Son of Saul to name just a few -- were just outright stopped by me if I knew I wasn't going to get into it.

With that said, the movies listed below deserve your utter and complete consternation. Watching them is a risky proposition that I wouldn't undertake were I you.

#10 - Aloha - D
Unable to balance an abundance of storylines, Aloha is a film that is unsure of where it's going evident by the fact that an hour into the flick, I had no clue what the main plot point was.

#9 - Tomorrowland - D-
Yes, even this self-proclaimed Disney lover is able to place one of their films in his bottom ten. So ambitious, yet so painfully lacking in the story department.

#8 - The Boy Next Door - D-
A low budget tv movie that made it to the screen because of its "star" in J. Lo and the fact that it showed male buttocks. (SoH)

#7 - Out of the Dark - D-
A horror film that so literally dark -- meaning lit so poorly -- that I couldn't tell what was happening onscreen. (SoN)

#6 - Blackhat - D-
One of the blandest films I've seen in a long time that tries to morph into an action film in its final act, but it's much too little too late. (SoH)

#5 - The Lazarus Effect - D-
Its eighty minute runtime feels interminable with no scares whatsoever as it brings out every horror cliché in the book. (SoN)

#4 - Hot Pursuit - D-
A heinously unfunny comedy in which two actresses are forced to try and act their way through one of the most poorly-written scripts I've seen in a long time. (SoA)

#3 - Jupiter Ascending - D-
I really enjoyed the Wachowski's Cloud Atlas, but Jupiter Ascending was a mess with a script that barely makes sense and a group of actors that are typically good floundering about in some of their worst roles to date. (SoH)

#2 - Unfinished Business - F
Perhaps the worst directed film on this list, I turned this one off forty minutes in only to finish it because I knew it would end up near the top of this ignominious list. (SoH)

#1 - Mortdecai - F
A purported comedy, not only did I not laugh once, but a smile never even came across my face. A jumbled mess of tone and style, this film never finds its footing. Attempts at being a sex comedy come across as childish. Action sequences are out of place and poorly staged. Everything about Johnny Depp's performance as a bumbling art dealer is so over the top and heinously misguided by the director with Depp feeling as if he were taking part in a completely different film.